Sipahi chronicles: Tales of Indian soldiers who fought in World War I

Gabar Singh Negi was 22 when he died, thousands of miles from his home in remote Garhwal village, in a fierce battle that took place in a small village in France called Neuve Chapelle, not far from the German border. It was early on the morning of March 10, 1915 — just over a hundred years ago — and Negi, a soldier in the 39 Garhwal Rifles, had bayonetted and killed several enemy soldiers before the shells raining down all around got him.

His body was never recovered, but Negi was given a posthumous Victoria Cross, the British Empire's highest military award. Back home in his village, his 14-year-old wife Satoori — they'd been married only a year — was shattered. She didn't remarry.

"Satoori wore the Victoria Cross pinned on her sari all her life. She would wear it even when she went to fetch firewood and all the villagers would stand up to salute her. Satoori died in 1981. I have a photograph of her in the book — a wrinkly old lady standing and taking the salute. Her story was so moving," says Shrabani Basu, whose recent book, For King and Another Country, looks at World War I (WWI) and the role of India and the Indian army in it, through stories of soldiers like Negi, who left home and country and crossed the dreaded kaalapani to fight in a war that was not their own and knew little of.

Over a million Indians — soliders, and support staff such as doctors, porters, cooks, and so on — fought in Europe, the Middle East and other fronts between 1914 and 1918. Of these, more than 70,000 died or went missing; tens of thousands more were wounded and yet more affected in life-changing ways. Indian soldiers (which then included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal) played decisive roles in several battles, and their gallantry was commended with 92,000 gallantry awards, 11 of them Victoria Crosses. And yet for a long time afterwards, they remained forgotten even by their own compatriots. Even today, descriptions of the Great War in school history curricula remain Euro-centric. Which is what makes recent books on the subject part of all that's happening around the world to mark the centenary of the war, so welcome.

Of these, Indian Voices of the Great War: Soldiers' Letters, 1914-18, edited by historian David Omissi is a collection of 650 letters, selected from among thousands, that Indian soldiers in France wrote to loved ones back home.

These letters constitute the "primary" source material that Basu and all other recent writers have mined to build the WWI story. Ironically, the only reason they have survived and can be accessed today is that the British censored them for anything "seditious" or damaging to morale back home. Even so, they constitute an "authentic" voice and are touching testimonies to the feelings of adventure and wonder, confusion and strangeness, fear and loneliness, frustration and anger, horror and resignation that foot soldiers like Negi must have felt. Here's what storekeeper DN Sircar writes from Brighton on November 12, 1915: "The girls of this place are notorious and very fond of accosting Indians and fooling with them. They are ever ready for any purpose." Another, Dafadar Ali Khan, writes from Egypt, of a Gurkha soldier who began firing indiscriminately. "I spotted him again close at hand and he fired and the bullet passed through my pagri, just missing my head. Great is god's grace! I fired again and dropped him wounded."

One surprising sentiment that most of the letters profess, and that Omissi, Basu and the others comment on is loyalty for the king. "Show your loyalty to the Government and to King George V," writes a Jemadar in January 1915 (sic). "It is every man's duty to fulfill his obligations towards God, by rendering the dues of loyalty to his King."

Should these statements be taken seriously? Gajendra Singh, in The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers And The Two World Wars: Between Self And Sepoy does a fine, scholarly job of reading between the lines. His conclusion, that "the sipahis' voice was conditioned and curtailed by the manner in which it was recorded", is a necessary corrective to any contemporary effort to re-read the letters at face value.

Santanu Das's 1914-1918: Indians On The Western Front, which presents a photographic record of Indians in France, does something similar — complicating the narrative with the many discordant cues that pictures of the time throw up. You see soldiers huddled up against the cold — winter clothing was in short supply long into the war, and many made do with curtains and tablecloths. Another picture shows sepoys relaxing on the picturesque grounds of Brighton hospital; just beyond is a high fence which kept them from going out.

If the narratives in these books can be faulted in any way, it is for focusing too much attention on the European Front. Vedica Kant's If I Die Here, Who Will Remember Me? India and the First World War — none of them look at the role of the Indian army in the Middle East, where the largest expedition of soldiers was deployed, and Gallipoli, where the maximum casualties were recorded.